Going to pieces in the 21st century. A SUMmary

In the opening paragraph of Laura Hoptman’s catalogue essay for Unmonumental, New Gallery 2007, titled ‘Going to pieces in the 21^st Century’ we are informed that sculpture has after a ‘hiatus’ found itself as the main voice of ‘contemporary art discourse’. Hoptman informs us that this new found status is not one that always necessarily shares a common ground in the made but is instead a combination, of made and made of.

Hoptman outlines for the reader what she believes to be the three essential points of artistic production leading through the periods and the relevant social paradigms associated as to establish an understanding of the past intentions of juxtaposition and fracture (20^th century) against those of a wikicentric culture (21^st century) that has shifted it’s focus and practice to that of cataloguing information and referencing materiality to form complete statements. These statements concern themselves not with the past notions of symbolism and instead are reflections of the spirit of our times. Hoptman relates the new form as to a customization ( via reference to the ability of style and ideologies to be ‘ubiquitous’) of aesthetics, ideologies, cultural, etc. already available to not only the singular but to the all. This point is drawn through reference as to how we as a society seek to understand this next step in information ascendance.

Her first step in this outline begins by first exploring the origination of the ‘assemblage’ via a discussion surrounding the seminal exhibition organized by William Seitz , The Art of Assemblage, Museum of Modern Art 1961 in which he referred to the ‘assemblage’ as a new call to arms of the Dadaist intentions of creating true anti-art. In which the juxtaposition of everyday objects placed together by ‘chance’ created works that were seen not only as the singular combined object but a ‘fracture’ of all the combined parts.

Robert Rauschenberg is now introduced at this stage along with his combines referred to as ‘hybrids of painting and sculpture’. Hoptman quotes from one of the ‘kings of culterberg’ Leo Stienberg as to combines similarity to assemblage in the case of the reading of the work (juxtaposition) being the relationship of the elements to each other and the piece as a whole. Such solidifying their place within an art history scenario as possibly another form of the Dadaists anti-art intentions (although one can read into Rauschenberg’s statements as a means of trying to break free of this association).

Hoptman closes the essay in referring us to a quote by Buckminster Fuller in which he stated that Henry ford was the greatest artist of the twentieth century as “the ford automobile transcended full market penetration to become the world symbol for a car”. A statement that can be seen in support of moving towards a closing that denotes that the new form of sculpture moves away from the moment but instead looks to transcend the artist and take on the zeitgeist intentions discussed earlier and further along into the creation of the make-your-own-teleology movement driven towards a new shift in sculpture and its use of an established aesthetic that Hoptman has termed as Unmonumnetal.